Broken Bells at the Schnitz, the MLS All-Star Game, Pendulum Aerial Arts, and more of the month's best bets for things to see and do in Portland

For its 15th anniversary, Pendulum Aerial Arts reimagines its High Art production—inspired by famous paintings like Pablo Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror and Salvador Dali’s Birth of the New Man—with music by New York singer Sasha Lazard and Grammy-nominated cellist Dave Eggar. Meanwhile, the aerial collective A-WOL Dance dangles from the trees in West Linn’s Mary S. Young Park at its 10th annual outdoor, nighttime performance series.

Broken Bells, the collaboration between Shins front man and former Portland resident James Mercer (right) and producer-to-the-stars Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse, have a thing for space. Lyrics lamenting a lackluster world, they look to the heavens in both their music videos and live concerts, where the stage could be pulled from a ’60s science fiction flick and celestial projections hurtle the audience through the stars.

Aug 11 | Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Theater: The Three Sisters

PETE (Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble) teams up with Lewis & Clark theater professor Stepan Simek for an edgy take on his new Chekhov translation, which abandons the classic’s traditional, ornamental English, trying instead for a direct, aggressive energy Simek finds in the original Russian. Here’s a sample:

1916 translation: MASHA: In this town to know three languages is an unnecessary luxury! Not even a luxury, but an unnecessary encumbrance, like a sixth finger.

Simek translation: MASHA: To know three languages in this shitholeis an unnecessary luxury. It’s not even a luxury;it’s more like some sort of an unnecessary add-on, like having a sixth finger.

Hook-happy punk-vet Leo: “Then I was like, ‘Come, land on my branch, and we’ll make the music of the forest.’”

That’s one explanation given on stage by these two very different musicians for why they came together, but it also illustrates a different point: they’re winning raves as much for their charming and hilarious stage banter as for their musical prowess, which is saying something.

Aug 29 | Aladdin Theater

This article appeared in the
August 2014
issue of
Portland Monthly
Magazine.